POETRY SPOTLIGHT: 'Two Carolines' by Miriel Lenore

This week's poem comes from Miriel Lenore's collection a wild kind of tune, the third book in her 'pioneer grandmother' series.

'In a wild tale arcing from 1845 to the present, in poetry underpinned by meticulous research, we inhabit settler society with all its attendant joys, hardship and grief as we careen with Caroline through her journey of love, loss and horror into madness.'
– Biff Ward, author of In My Mother's Hands

Post written by Maddy Sexton

Once again, I have the difficult task of writing a piece about poetry that does justice to the author – and to the usual writer of these posts, Poppy Nwosu, who's enviably deft at finding connection and meaning in poetry.
Earlier this week, I read Valerie Volk's guest post about her search for Anna Werner, her maternal great-grandmother (find it here). Valerie's search was born of a need to know more about her distant relative, something which fascinated me. This delving into the past, tugging at a single thread until the weaving unravels, is painstaking work.

With this in mind, I absent-mindedly began flicking through Miriel Lenore's a wild kind of tune. Coincidentally, this collection and the story it tells is markedly similar to Valerie's.

Miriel first heard of her great-grandmother Caroline when she was in high school. Her mother whispered to her that Caroline had been confined to a mental asylum for twenty-one years, after giving birth to her twelfth child. She remained there until her death. It's a heavy story that Miriel tasked herself with tracing and writing. I found the poems deeply moving, although most were imbued with a great deal of sadness.
Miriel finds a way to honour her pioneer grandmothers, finding tender moments in lives filled with childbirth and care, hard farm work, and death. Miriel's foreword to the book explains:

a wild kind of tune is the third, after drums & bonnets and the Dog Rock, in my pioneer grandmothers series, unearthing the stories of women not famous, not wealthy, not beautiful, women who hold up half the sky.

'Women who hold up half the sky.' Women who worked hard every day of their lives only to be forgotten about in death, or worse, as in Caroline's case, life. A sad, all-too-common reality for many pioneering women, I imagine, and something that Miriel captures beautifully in this week's feature poem, 'Two Carolines'.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Although it's a rather gloomy poem, I find it moving, and hopeful. Although these sky-bearing women may have faded into nothingness for many years, we have people like Miriel to bring them back into focus. To humanise them, and remember them.
Maybe I am good at finding meaning in poetry after all! Best not hold my breath.

About the author:

From her days as a botanist, to her years at an agricultural school in Fiji, to her passion for Australian rock art, Miriel Lenore has been working away at questions of ecology and place. Her poetry is also deeply grounded in her experience as a feminist, mother, grandmother and pioneer of a different sort.
This is Miriel Lenore's seventh book of poetry, and the third volume in her Grandmothers trilogy, following the success of Drums and Bonnets and The Dog Rock. As in the earlier volumes, Miriel continues to explore the heart-breaking questions of the white settler story: where is home, how do we live here?
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